Are we witnessing the greatest of all time in any division right now?

Obviously not.

 

Nah and its pretty impossible to be

The greatness of modern fighters can never match the greatness of old school fighters who fought far more frequently and fought the top guys in many fights rather than just meeting them once or twice. Note LaMotta vs Robinson or Langford vs Wills. There was less politics getting in the way, less money to make fighters retire early and just generally hungrier men who grew up in worse conditions. And losing wasnt such a big deal then as compared to now, so riskier fights werent as avoided for that reason too.

In terms of H2H you could make a couple arguments but i typically prefer the fighters of the 80s-90s, whom had similar level of performance enhancing drugs as current fighters but far, far worse testing or even nonexistent testing. Modern fighters have to cycle off of anabolics and HGH when they enter the testing pool and pick their cycles carefully, and can only use newly made peptides for a short time until theyre randomly banned by USADA even if they have no side effects.

 

Liston will never be topped.

 

Very few who are living through history realize they are living through history.

Did anyone think in 1992 that they were witnessing the most stacked middleweight division ever? I certainly didn't. And I was attending those fights. But in retrospect, yeah it was. And just to remind you, this was the top ten according to Ring...

1. Julian Jackson
2. James Toney
3. Reggie Johnson
4. Roy Jones Jr.
5. Mike McCallum
6. Sumbu Kalambay
7. Gerald McClellan
8. Lamar Parks
9. Bernard Hopkins
10. Thomas Tate

 

Of course they didn't. That's 1942

Champion. Tony Zale
1. Archie Moore
2. Charley Burley
3. Holman Williams
4. Kid Tunero
5. Jose Basora
6. Jake LaMotta
7. Jack Chase
8. Eddie Booker
9.Harry (Kid) Matthews
10. Antonio Fernandez

 

Almost everyone on that 1992 list would demolish Zale.

 

And exactly none of them are a greater fighter than Archie Moore.

 

I saw Roy Jr in person in 1993 at super middle vs. Sugar Boy Malinga and my lord … never seen anything like it. He was like a different species.

 

It's like someone shook the Etch-a-Sketch on 150 years of boxing. Roy was that different.

Then you have Jackson, McClellan, Toney, Hopkins, Reggiek, McCallum all swimming in the same waters... Even the low guy, Lamar Parks, could box and punch like a beast. A great prosepct.

 

Arguably Usyk in the Cruiserweight division and maybe Inoue or Chocolatito in their best divisions maybe Loma as well at his best divison though more so H2H then in terms of legacy

 

Big McCallum fan personally. Doesn’t get much love.

 

Salient opening line. Just look at all the wars in Europe that now have historians devoted to them, but that was every other minute in Europe from the beginning of time until 1945. World War II was probably just a Tuesday to the average citizen.

 

Usyk is the greatest cruiser ever for me

Inoue is the H2H goat at 118 and 122 imo but you can’t reasonably make a case for him being the greatest ever at either weight

Right now 115 doesn’t really have a clear cut goat, my pick would probably be Sung Kil Moon, but maybe Bam could get there if he knocks off Martinez and Tanaka then sticks around for a while and defends against some contenders, but seems unlikely.

Teraji probably could’ve got there at 108 if he stuck around

Other than those nobody comes to mind. In short basically just Usyk

 

No, but there is an active fighter who is arguably the GOAT in a weight divison - Usyk. It's basically either him or Holyfield for the greatest CW of all time.